


Galra Moon

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, I'm going to add so many tags as I go on, M/M, Rewrite, That's it, The Galra are werewolves, that's the premise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 15:51:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8452399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: During one of his night runs, Shiro finds himself face down in the part, with a splitting headache and a strange symbol etched into his prosthetic arm. He dreams that he was attacked by a dog woman dressed in purple. But that can’t be true, can it?	They do say the truth is stranger than fiction. Rewrite of Vegas Moon.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Totally phoned it in on the fic summary so thanks if you're reading this. I'll have to go back with a better one soon.
> 
> This is a rewrite/reworking of my other fic Vegas Moon. I never got super far into that one (tried to write a hardcore mystery and very quickly realized I didn't have the patience for that) but if you're interested in checking out what this used to be, it's still up.
> 
> What is this? A buncha werewolves. Some ancient drama. An attempt to write intrigue and action scenes. It's hard for me to say so early in the game but I think I can guarantee that this is going to get weirder than a lot of people are going to expect.
> 
> Title thoughts because I had them and this is basically the only platform I use to talk to folks. Changed it from "Vegas Moon" to "Galra Moon" because that's basically the only constant between them? Didn't want to put (Rewrite) in the title because I only got three chapters into my first attempt at this premise. Also not explicitly in Vegas anymore. But I didn't want to change a two word title so much that there was no connection at all between them. I don't know. I hope y'all like this anyways even though it's a completely different beast.

This is the fourth night in a row he’s seen her in the park. Shiro has been running this same route for years, the five miles from his house, through the park to the coffee shop and back, almost every night. He knew this park inside and out, knew the other night owls who haunted the place after sundown. He’d met his fair share of the homeless, the drunk, the addicts who lingered in the park when night came and they could find a place to sleep and not be bothered.

Shiro never paid them too much mind; he was only one person, but if they asked he would give them some money and directions to the nearest shelter. For the most part his relationship with them remained distant. But this same little old woman had been in the park for several days in row now. He had passed her without comment on his way to the shop but she’s still there now that he’s on his way back.

Shiro slows to a stop about twenty feet away from her. She’s sitting on a bench hunched over herself, rocking back and forth. She’s dressed in a dark purple robe that pools around her body, leaving her little more than a shaking, shapeless form. The only reason Shiro knows the figure is female is the long strands of white, brittle looking hair that falls out of her hood and over her shoulders.

There’s a couple seconds where Shiro just stands there, his breath misting in front of him, and wonders if he should ask her if she needs help. Everyone has their dignity even at their lowest point and, when he was younger and more eager to help, he’d inadvertently stepped on more than a few sets of toes. But there’s a difference between a middle aged man with a bottle of whiskey and a little old lady weighed down in her clothes. It’s getting cold;  Shiro’s already wearing his heavy jacket out to run and his arm aches where it’s joined to his prosthetic. If he just went on and something happened to her, he’d never be able to forgive himself. He closes the distance between them at a trot.

“Ma’am?” he calls. He draws nearer and now he hears her talking to herself. His brow furrows, straining to make out what she’s saying. There’s little success. Her words sound sharp and foreign. Unsettling. He slows just out of reach. “Do you need help? It’s getting cold tonight.” She keeps muttering to herself, little more than a murmur that raises the hair on the back of his neck.

“Ma’am? If you want, I can’t take you to a shelt-” he steps within her reach and she whips her head towards him. He sees a flash of purple skin, a long thin muzzle full of sharp teeth when she curls back her lips and hisses in his face.Her hand flashes out and grips his prosthetic arm. He flinches back with a cry but she has a monstrously strong grip. It burns; even through his jacket it feels like he’s left his prosthetic sitting in a fire.

It feels like she holds him there for hours, digging her claws in and burning him, searing his skin. He wants to scream, pull away and run but she has him trapped with the vice like grip on his arm. Her eyes shine sunlight gold in the shadows made by her hood, so bright he wonders, wildly, that they must be glowing on their own instead of reflecting the moonlight. They stare at each other, her muzzle working in strange twitches around those sharp words and the burning grows too much. He can’t think of anything else. He’s mesmerized…

He wakes up wet and cold face down in the grass. He blinks the dew out of his eyes, flexes his fingers. When he tries to move his head needles of pain stab in behind his eyes. He rolls onto his back with effort and pushes the heels of his hands to his eyes. The pressure helps a little, but his head still throbs with every heartbeat.

He lays there for what feels like several minutes, trying to focus more on the chilly prickling of the grass beneath him. How long has he been lying here? Pull in a deep breath, let it back out. Focus. It’s just a headache. When he looks back up at the sky he’s sees it’s still night.

What happened?

He had stopped to help what looked like an elderly woman. But she wasn’t a woman, was she? A cold chill runs through him at the memory of that thin snout, gleaming teeth and bright gold eyes. Is she-

Shiro pushes himself up with a pained groan and looks around. There’s the bench where the woman sat but now it’s empty. As far as he can see, he’s completely alone. Shiro rises to his feet and stops once again as a wave of nausea washes over him. He stumbles to the bench and drops into it. Shoving his hand in his pocket, he pulls his phone out and turns it on.

Midnight? He’d went out for his run at nine. At most it took him an hour to make his run but… Had he really been out for two hours? Shiro sits there for several minutes, watching the time tick by on his phone and wondering what he should do. Had he lost track of time and left home later than he thought? That was the best case scenario. The worst was that he had slipped in the grass somewhere while he was running, knocked himself out for who knew how long and the whole thing with the woman was a fever dream.

But he’s sure he’s been seeing her around for the past few days. Maybe he was thinking about that before he went out? It could make sense out of what he just saw, or imagined he saw. His head still hurts and his muscles pull in two hot lines down either side of his neck into his shoulders. The nausea and slight dizziness are worrying as well. These are all signs of a concussion, and that’s one of the few things he’s not willing to play around with.

Shiro squints at his phone and scrolls through to Keith’s number. It’s late, but the guy tended to take more of a ‘I’ll sleep when I’m tired’ approach rather than ‘I’ll sleep when it’s appropriate’.

It rings long enough to make him worry before Keith answers.

“Shiro?” he asks. His voice is thick with sleep. Shiro feels a little bad for waking him up, and knows he’s about to feel worse for the favor he’s about to ask.

“Hey Keith. I need you to take me to the emergency room.” The other end explodes into a fury of rustling sheets and soft thumps as Keith kicks himself out of bed.

“Yeah? Okay, what the hell happened? Are you at home- shit-” Keith stumbles over something. “Do I have time to put my pants on?” A growl of impatience. “Goddamn, Shiro, call an ambulance!”

“I’m not dying. I just don’t have my car and I don’t think I should walk home,” Shiro says. He hears Keith’s keys jingle and the door slamming behind him.

“I don’t think you would consider yourself dying until we’re holding your funeral,” Keith huffs. “Where are you? I mean it, call an ambulance if you need one!”

“I’m in the north end of the park not too far from the coffee shop. You’ll see me if you head over there. I promise I don’t need one. I just felt in the grass and knocked my head. I just want to double check that I didn’t give myself a concussion. I’ll make it up to you.” Shiro says. Keith growls back at him.

“Just stay where you are and I’ll be over there in a few minutes,” Keith says.

It’s past three before they finally step out of the emergency room and head back towards Keith’s car.

Good news: He doesn’t have a concussion. They had looked him over, run some tests and kept him under observation for a couple hours but Shiro’s headache and dizziness had already, for the most part, dissipated by the time they were walking through the front doors. The only strange thing by that point was that Keith’s car had had a strange, spicy scent to it that he couldn’t really explain, but at that point he had chalked it up to head trauma.The lack of which was relieving, but it didn’t really account for his lost time. They best they could come up between all of them was that Shiro had lost track of time and left home far later than he had intended. Which, okay, he could accept that. He had been busy today.

Bad news: His arm was burned where it met his prosthetic. Nothing bad; only some redness, a couple patches of first degree that had been dealt with using cream and gauze. He’d need to run to the pharmacy for more of both in the morning but if he took care of himself it would be cleared up in a few days. So something _had_ happened, but what? No one just fell out in the middle of the park on a cold night and burned their arm. It was too strange.

Weird news: His prosthetic had a new mark etched into it. Two prongs on top, three on the bottom and a hexagonal space in the center. High up and on the outside, right where that woman had gripped him. Or he thought she did? The doctor hadn’t made a comment on it and neither had the nurses; after all, they didn’t know the mark was new.

Shiro can only assume Keith hadn’t seen the mark because he yawns, content as he can be, as he unlocks the car and both of them get in. The scent of spice is still there and Shiro sniffs lightly as he looks around the car as he puts on his seatbelt. Keith hardly used his car. He didn’t keep anything in it and when he looks around, it’s totally clean.

“What’s wrong?” Keith asks as he turns on the car. He yawns again. Shiro feels a bit guilty for keeping him up so late and thinks he’ll buy him something for breakfast in the morning.

“I just smell pepper?” Shiro says. “I can’t figure out where it’s coming from.” Keith flinches, glances at him out of the corner of his eye before he turns back and watches as he pulls out of the parking spot. Shiro can’t be sure with only the dim green lights of the dashboard but he thinks Keith’s cheeks go pink.

“I don’t what that is,” Keith says as they pull out of the parking lot and onto the highway. “I don’t smell it.”

* * *

 

Shiro knew there wasn’t much point in bringing donuts to a coffee shop, especially considering the only thing separating the two shops was a comic book store. However ‘It was on the way’ is a very convincing train of thought. Keith always liked their kolaches anyways, so he only feels a slight twinge of guilt when Lance catches him at the door with a look that screams ‘Are you serious?’

Keith stands at one of the tables talking to Sendak, one of their regulars, so Shiro meets Lance at the counter instead. No sooner does he set the box on the counter before Lance is flipping it open and looking through the contents.

“You get two,” Shiro says. One couldn’t give food to either Lance or Keith without accounting for the other. Lance purrs a thank you and spreads out a napkin on the counter, pulling out a strawberry cake donut and another covered in chocolate sprinkles. He knows better than to touch the two kolaches it seems.

“Keith was bitchin’ about having to take you the emergency room last night,” Lance says. He takes a bite out of the strawberry with a happy hum. “You okay?” Shiro nods.

“Yeah. I worried about having a concussion but that wound up not being the case. Just some little wounds on my arm but it’s not anything to worry about,” Shiro says.

“Glad you’re okay,” Lance says. Keith huffs, growls something along the lines of ‘leave him alone’ behind him. Shiro turns to see what’s wrong.

Sendak leans back in his chair, fixing Shiro with a hard stare. Shiro turns his head slightly, confused as to why Sendak suddenly has such an interest in him. Why the scent of spice is in his nose again, nearly overpowered by the smell of sage.

Sendak is a big guy, easily passing six and a half feet tall. He fills the chair he sits in and even though he’s sitting, he’s nearly even with Keith standing at the table beside him, hackles raised. He has messy black hair that he keeps pushed back out of his eyes, though his face is clean shaven. A scar mars his right eye, and the fake one, oddly enough, is bright red instead of the natural gold of the other. Weird, but Shiro isn’t one to judge. The biggest similarity between them is that Sendak also has a cybernetic arm. He doesn’t know where Sendak got it, or what how he lost his arm in the first place but it’s the only other one he’s seen as complex and naturally responsive as his own.

But that’s not the point. The point is that Sendak is staring him down with something of a mix of curiosity and thinly veiled aggression. It raises the hair at the back of his neck. Keith straightens up, brow furrowed.

“Sendak, if you’re going to sit there staring at him you can do that outside. Go on,” Keith presses. Shiro wonders what they were talking about earlier.

“Are you oka-” Sendak interrupts him by pushing back from the table and squeaking the legs of his chair on the linoleum.

“If you insist,” he says to Keith, whose eyes follow him as he stands. He faces Shiro. “I’ll see you later. Have fun,” he says. He picks up his coffee and is out of the store before Shiro can really think to ask him what he meant. Keith huffs and pushes Sendak’s chair in.

“What was that about?” Shiro asks as Keith joins him at the counter and tugs the box away from Lance. He helps himself to a kolache.

“Sendak loves to give Keith a hard time,” Lance says. He finishes the last of his breakfast and turns to start pouring Shiro some black coffee. “I keep telling him Sendak only does it because he gets a rise out of him but he can’t help himself. He has to sass the customers.” Keith makes a noncommittal sound.

“He heard about me taking you to the emergency room,” Keith says. Lance hands Shiro his coffee and waves him off when he goes to pull out his wallet.

“How many people did you tell about me knocking myself out on wet grass?” Shiro asks, amused. Keith takes another bite and points at Lance. That makes sense. Lance loved drama and couldn’t keep secrets _that_ well.

“He didn’t bother you too much?” he asks. Keith rolls his eyes.

“Not any more than usual. He’s in here almost every day so I’m used to it,” Keith says. Shiro pats him between the shoulders as an apology. He feels Keith shiver under his hand and again, that scent of spice. Is it Keith?

“It’s Saturday, are you coming over?” Shiro asks. Keith relaxes a little, digs in the box again and picks out donut.

“You still want to do movie night after yesterday?” Keith says. It had been their routine for months now, Keith coming over to Shiro’s house for dinner and a shitty movie. It started out as an excuse for Keith to eat decently at least one night a week but by now it was more hobby than anything.

“Yeah, of course. Are you too busy?” Shiro says.

“No, I’ll come. I just thought you’d want to sleep in for once,” Keith muses. Shiro turns to Lance.

“Is Hunk in yet? I want him to look at my arm,” Shiro says. Lance waves towards the back door of the shop.

“He came in with me this morning. He shouldn’t be too busy so help yourself,” Lance says. Shiro nods his thanks and takes his coffee with him. There’s little more in the backroom of the coffee shop than a storage room and cleaning supplies. Shiro goes past it and on the other side of the room is a door that leads to a garage that opens up into the alley behind the row of shops. It’s here where Hunk works as a small parts mechanic. Or that’s what Shiro thinks of him; he knows Hunk can pull apart things of any size or shape or complexity without trouble.

Over the past several years of having his prosthetic, Shiro’s come to trust the upkeep less to those associated with the hospital and more with Hunk. Sure, Hunk didn’t take his insurance, but he also didn’t try to steal his wallet for a tune up.

Shiro knocks on the door before he opens it, and the scent of motor oil and cold metal nearly overwhelms him. He coughs in the doorway. Hunk sits up from where he’s hunched over a cluttered desk and sets down the small motor he’s working on and waves him over.

“What happened last night?” Hunk asks. Shiro walks in and sets his coffee on the desk and pulls up another stool. “Heard you went to the hospital.”

“It was kind of dewy last night and I thought cutting across the grass would be a good idea. I fell, hit my head and felt kind of dizzy so I figured I’d just be safe and have them check if I had a concussion,” Shiro explains. No point in telling him, or anyone else, about the crazy dog lady dream he’d had while he was out. “Something weird is up with my arm and I wanted to ask you to look at it.” Shiro says.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Hunk replies. Shiro rolls his sleeve up to his shoulder and sets his arm on the desk. Hunk motions to the bandages around his upper arm.

“Burns,” Shiro explains.

“Burns?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Shiro flexes his hand. “My arm works fine. I  was just wondering about the joint where the burns are and,” he turns his arm, shows Hunk the outside of it, “wanted to ask if you recognized this symbol.” Hunk turns his arm a bit more, brow furrowed as he looks at the symbol. He brushes his thumb over it and frowns.

“It just showed up last night? Who was messing with your arm?” Hunk asks.

 _‘A dog lady grabbed me!’_ Shiro thinks but all he can do is shrug. “I can’t even guess at what happened last night. I was just trying to do my normal run.” It sounds too crazy to be anything more real than a wild dream. Hunk frowns.

“Well, the only other time I’ve seen this symbol is on Sendak’s prosthetic, but I don’t have any idea why you would have it.”


End file.
